Journalist, entrepreneur and marketing firm founder. I write about higher ed and early career issues. Pithily. I was pontificating about Millennials and Millennial culture back when they were still known as Gen Y.

Confidence trumps competence and a lack of the former is a major contributing factor to unequal career outcomes between women and men, journalists Claire Shipman and Katty Kay argue in their new book, The Confidence Code: The Science And Art Of Self-Assurance – What Women Should Know. Their work is the subject of a current feature over at The Atlantic and while the piece offers a compelling perspective on why self-belief trumps pure talent in terms of career success, there’s one little fly in the polemical ointment when it comes to gender and self-belief.

Young women don’t lack for personal confidence or ambition. College-age women are now every bit as narcissistic as their male peers. When it comes to careers, there isa gender ambition gap – more Millennial women (66%) than men (59%) say that having a high-paying, prestigious career is important to them. Young women have no doubt they can balance work and home life. In fact, they actually eschew the need for mentorship and evince a desire to blaze their own trails vs. following in the footsteps of high-achieving female leaders in their own workplaces.

Born Ready (Photo credit: TheeErin)

So why aren’t young women speaking up and stepping up? Why are they minding their Ps and Qs while male classmates and then colleagues are getting in trouble, taking risks and reaping rewards? They’re not stupid; they’re cynical. As Shipman and Kay touch on briefly in their piece, women are penalized for displays of confidence.

“Which is why any discussion of this subject requires a major caveat. Yes, women suffer consequences for their lack of confidence—but when they do behave assertively, they may suffer a whole other set of consequences, ones that men don’t typically experience. Attitudes toward women are changing, and for the better, but a host of troubling research shows that they can still pay a heavier social and even professional penalty than men do for acting in a way that’s seen as aggressive. If a woman walks into her boss’s office with unsolicited opinions, speaks up first at meetings, or gives business advice above her pay grade, she risks being disliked or even—let’s be blunt—being labeled a bitch. The more a woman succeeds, the worse the vitriol seems to get. It’s not just her competence that’s called into question; it’s her very character.”

Don’t for a second think that young women don’t learn this lesson at an early age.

The Pew found that even as Millennial women prioritize successful careers, they aren’t wearing rose-colored glasses about what’s standing in their way. 51% of Millennial woman believe that society favors men over women, 75% say more changes are necessary to achieve workplace gender equality and 60% believe that men tend to be paid more than women for performing the same work.

They can read studies that find they’re likely to be judged less hirable by scientific faculty than equally qualified male candidates or less likely to be labeled as “high-potential employees” by white collar bosses, despite outperforming male colleagues. They can see no less than The Wall Street Journal being called out on social media for announcing a tech conference in which the initial lineup of speakers were all men. They get bombarded with advice to negotiate for higher starting salaries and raises, only to hear later that they may be punished for daring to ask for more. And you better believe that they’re internalizing the message that they’re getting a raw deal and adapting their behavior on the job or in the college classroom accordingly.

During a Good Morning America appearance earlier this week, Shipman suggested that the best thing we can teach young girls is how to fail and then encourage them to do so early and often. While freeing young women from both the societal and self-imposed expectation of perfectionism is laudable, it doesn’t go far enough. Junior Achievement USA recently found 43% of teenage boys expect to earn more than $35K in their first job while 35% of teenage girls expect the same. Young women don’t just need to believe in themselves, they need to believe in a truly level playing field on which they’re not penalized for competing at full strength and putting their well-founded ambition on display.

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